Most Enjoyable Books Finished:
– Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman! by Richard Feynman
– Total Recall by Arnold Schwarzenegger
– Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller Sr. by Ron Chernow
– A Man for All Markets by Ed Thorpe
Most Important Books:
-Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
– Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets by Nassim Taleb
– Mastering the Market Cycle by Howard Marks
Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman! by Richard Feynman
Ranked as one of the ten greatest physicists of all time, Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman demonstrates why he’s such a unique character in history with this book. This is a laugh out loud book and shows how Feynman’s mind operates and how he is curious about how nearly EVERYTHING works, from learning to dance, to learning to play the bongos, to learning how to pick locks, and on and on. Feynman is FUNNY, playing practical jokes on his colleagues while he worked on the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos developing the nuclear bomb. This book is one I will probably revisit again at some point down the road because it was just so enjoyable and emanates what being someone who approaches the world with joy and curiosity can do, and how much they can enjoy life.
Total Recall by Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold is an AMAZING person. This biography was really uplifting, inspiring, and funny. Arnold set a vision for himself to come to America and become a bodybuilding champion. Speaking no English, he came to America and won the Mr. Olympia competition 7 times. Many people don’t know though, that Arnold would take business classes along with his English classes. He made $1M in real estate before he ever became a millionaire in the movies. He would go on to do MANY other various business ventures. He then set his mind to becoming the highest paid actor in the world, which he achieved. And then later, set his mind to becoming Governor of CA, the largest state in the country, and was twice elected. It’s an amazing story, but listening to Arnold tell it, you get the full grit, determination, and 100% uncompromising vision that leads someone to not take NO for an answer in order to accomplish monumental goals.
Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller Sr by Ron Chernow
I wrote a long review of this one a few months ago. I LOVED this biography of Rockefeller who may be the best businessman and philanthropist in American history. John D. hardly changed his demeanor from the days he was a young man, to the day he became the richest man in the world, till the day he died. He reshaped what it meant to be a philanthropist and changed the world. Can’t recommend this one enough.
A Man for All Markets by Ed Thorpe
Ed Thorpe’s story touched so many areas I enjoy. This mathematician from MIT was the man who invented how to count cards in blackjack and demonstrate that the game could be beat. But he also was an early hedge fund manager and one of the early “quant” hedge fund managers in the markets, racking up impressive returns which handily beat the markets year after year. He also discovered the Bernie Madoff fraud in the 1990s and tried to alert people that Madoff was committing fraud, to no avail. Fascinating story of accomplishments from MIT, to Las Vegas, to markets and business.
Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Daniel Kahneman is the only behavioral psychologist to win the Nobel Prize in economics. Through his lifetime of work with his partner Amos Tversky, he demonstrated that even though people believe that they’re rational, they are NOT. Kahneman demonstrates how the brain actually works, breaking it down to System 1 (impulsive) and System 2 (deep, slow thinking analysis) decision making. Most people don’t realize how often they make System 1 decisions verses System 2 (which is almost always better to do, stopping and taking more time to think through). Kahneman’s lifetime of countless studies demonstrate all of the biases that cloud human judgments, from recency bias, availability bias, anchoring, confirmation bias etc. If you want to understand your mind better, you should know that we all fool ourselves often with our own biases and emotional decisions every day. Kahneman’s work laid the ground work for the study of behavioral economics, which has upended that humans always make rational decisions in economics. This book will be one I probably review every year.
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets by Nassim Taleb
Somewhat a good corollary to Daniel Kahneman, Nassim Taleb has become perhaps the greatest modern day philosopher on the great role of randomness, luck, and Black Swan events that shape our world. Most people like to believe they’re successful in life or in the markets or in business because they are exceptional and better decision makers, but very often it’s due to a large role of luck and chance in life. Taleb demonstrates that we should prepare ourselves for asymmetric risks that are unpredictable, and we should realize that there are “alternate histories” that can take place, through no prediction or fault of our own.
Mastering the Market Cycle by Howard Marks
Howard Marks is widely considered one of the best investors living today. His understanding of risk management, and also of the cycles in the economy, company profits, and the markets is what he tries to illuminate in this book. He has long been a very clear, straight forward writer on the markets, and this book is a great primer for learning to understand market cycles in better detail. Marks’s ability to write in such an understandable way is why I’d recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn to be a better investor.
Other Books Completed:
– Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales
– The Red Queen by Matt Ridley
– Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended on It by Chris Voss
– Superforecasting by Philip Tetlock
– The Book of Joy by Dalai Lama & Desmond Tutu
– What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars by Brendan Moynihan & Jack Schwager
– Cathedral of the Wild by Boyd Varty
– The Lessons of History by Will & Ariel Durant
– Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert Sapolsky
– The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley
– The Story of the Human Body by Daniel Lieberman
– The Coming Storm by Michael Lewis
– The Little Book That Beats the Market by Joel Greenblatt
– When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long Term Capital Management by Roger Lowenstein
– The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene
Working on but haven’t completed yet:
– 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan Peterson
– Leadership: In Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin
– The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
– Den of Thieves by James Stewart
– Fortune’s Children by Arthur Vanderbilt II
– 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene
– The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy
– The Most Important Thing Illuminated by Howard Marks
– Big Debt Crises by Ray Dalio
Also On My Digital Bookshelf for 2019
– Who Is Michael Ovitz by Michael Ovitz
– Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
– Zero to One by Peter Thiel
– Washington by Ron Chernow
– Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford
– Ego Is The Enemy by Ryan Holiday
– The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday
– Atomic Habits by James Clear
– Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink